The Shining Dead
by Romann
Summary: Godric sees eternity in the stars.


Another close call. And what a close call. Eric wanted to roar. He wanted to tear those humans limb from tasty limb. He wanted to make them _thank_ him for eating them quickly and not playing with them first. Those under-evolved sorry excuses for sentient beings. How dare they take silver to him. How _dare_ they actually have good aim.

Entirely unimpressed with Eric's pacing and grunting and swearing, Godric lay down on the patchy grass, legs crossed and arms cushioning his head, as placid as though his skin hadn't been boiling a moment ago.

'You'll just call their attention.'

Eric let out a string of swear words so long a few of them were new even to Godric.

'Frankly, Eric, there's more to life than feeding. Calm down,' he pointed out once Eric had stopped roaring at the tree-tops. 'It'll go better tomorrow.'

Eric replied by pummeling an innocent old oak until its roots left the ground.

'Eric, sit down and stop defacing Nature.'

The oak's trunk splintered as Godric spoke.

'Eric, come lie down next to me and be quiet, please.'

Eric stopped punishing the tree for the humans' cheek and looked over his shoulder. Godric's tone had changed. This was an order.

'What for?' he asked gingerly. A glimpse of a scene he didn't even want to remember he had witnessed, let alone recreate, flashed in front of his eyes.

'Just do it,' Godric said, his tone coming dangerously close to a bark.

Eric shuffled his feet over to where Godric lay and sat down. After a beat, he lowered himself to the ground, levelling his head with his maker's and lying as stiffly as if a rod had lodged up his backside.

'What now?' he enquired, determinedly gazing down at his own nose and not at Godric.

'Look up.'

Rather wary of what he would find once he raised his eyelids, Eric obeyed. Above him there was just the sky. And silence.

'What is up?' he eventually asked. He was beginning to feel stroppy again.

'The stars,' Godric replied, almost reverent in his quiet tone.

Eric's mouth puffed with the strain of containing the huff that wanted to erupt, and again there was silence. A long, drawn-out silence, broken only by Eric's foot swaying against the scattered twigs while he waited for one of the stars to fall on them, or wink at them, or otherwise do _something_. None of them did, so he fidgeted. The thin, uneven grass was beginning to feel uncomfortable against his back.

'All right, I'm calm. May I get up now?'

'No. Look at them properly.'

'They're... there,' Eric said impatiently, racking his brain for the answer Godric wanted. He _hated_ it when Godric started philosophising. He never felt less adequate than at those times. 'They're... pretty?'

'They are,' Godric agreed, in the most caressing of voices. Then, after a moment, 'They... are... _enthralling_.'

Eric's eyes rolled so far back in his head that for a second he saw only the black pit of his boredom.

'I knew someone once,' Godric said warmly, 'who told me that they're not really there. That they're so far away that once their light reaches us they'll have fizzled into nothingness already. Long, long ago. And the ones that are alive now... we'll never see them, because it'll be so long before their light gets here. Isn't it fascinating?'

Eric stared at him as if he thought Godric had completely lost his mind.

Godric looked at him and then back at the sky, adding a bit defensively, '_I_ think it's fascinating. They're still there, although they aren't... they still shine so long after they died--they shine more brightly, even, because we couldn't see them when they were alive...'

'Who?' Eric cut in.

'The stars.'

'No, who did you know who told you that?'

'Someone I once knew.' Godric closed his eyes and for a moment it was as if he were trying to recall who the person had been. Then he looked up again and the stars shone in his eyes, and it was clear that he had never forgotten.

'Was this what you did?' Eric couldn't imagine a more excruciatingly boring scenario. 'Lie down and look up?'

'Sometimes we looked down,' Godric corrected, his head lolling lazily towards Eric.

Turning immediately away from Godric's coy smile, Eric gazed up again.

'I don't know if it's true...' an uncertain lilt crept into Godric's voice. 'I like to think it is, though. That way the stars are a bit like us, in a way. We, too, shine more brightly once we're dead. We're only truly seen once we're dead, like the stars. In a way.'

'Who was it who told you that?' Eric repeated, facing him again.

'It doesn't matter.' Without tearing his eyes from the sky above, Godric took Eric's hand and pointed at a particularly bright dot amidst the maze. 'That one. Can you see it?'

'Who was it?' Eric pressed on softly.

Godric paused and looked at him, his hand still holding Eric's aloft, extending Eric's fingers towards the sky like the painting in that italian chapel. He liked that painting, even if it had bored Eric to tears. Eric no longer cared about the humans' thoughts on the afterlife. Godric rather thought, though he didn't voice it, that the man in the painting resembled Eric a bit.

'Someone who no longer shines,' Godric eventually said. 'Only in my memories.'

Eric was momentarily speechless but there was no awkward silence, for Godric shook his hand, entwining his fingers with Eric to stretch them towards that one star that fascinated him so. 'Can you see it? That one?'

'Yes,' Eric murmured, his gaze trained on Godric's profile, framed by the near darkness of the waning Moon.

'You're not looking.'

'I am,' Eric countered at once. He didn't care about the stars, in the same way as he no longer wanted to learn this mysterious person's identity. But he did care about Godric's enthusiastic voice, about his shiny eyes turned excitedly towards the sky. So he summoned up the last shreds of his patience and followed his maker into the starry maze.

THE END


End file.
